Abstract: This collection is made up of photographs of and by Mrs. Boutelle, and her friends and family. These black and white photographs
are in albums that document the places and people that created the baskets and other artifacts that Mrs. Boutelle donated
to the San Diego Museum of Man in 1928. The collection also includes correspondence from the Boutelle family to other collectors,
previous attempts to catalogue the collection, original note books from the collector, various price tags from the original
baskets, and other items related to Mrs. Boutelle and her basket collection.

creator:
Boutelle, Abbie, 1846-1928

creator:
Boutelle, Thomas

Scope and Content

This collection is made up of photographs of and by Mrs. Boutelle, and her friends and family, as well as albums filled with
black and white images that document the places and people that created the baskets. Many of the pictures are 3.5” x 4.5”
and are black and white images. The albums are kept in Abbie Boutelle’s original order. The collection is divided into several
categories: Photographs, Correspondence, Artifacts/Notebooks, Old Cataloging Materials, and Miscellaneous. The collection
also includes some high resolution scans of items in the original collection. These scans are intended to give a quick overview
of the breadth of the collection and not to catalogue the collection as a whole. As a result the scans are not included on
this finding aid.

Biography

Abbie Boutelle was born around 1846 and married Thomas Boutelle March 5, 1868 in Clinton MA. The couple moved to San Diego
in 1895. Mrs. Boutelle was a photographer and a collector of Native American-made baskets. Around the turn of the 19th century,
Mrs. Boutelle and her husband, both prominent San Diegans, took several trips to the Native American reservations in and around
San Diego County. On these outings the couple would often provide the Native Americans with “supplies and luxuries” that the
government did not offer (Black, 1913). Mrs. Boutelle would obtain baskets for her collection on these outings either from
trade or direct purchase. According to Ken Hedges, Emeritus Curator of California Collections at the San Diego Museum of Man,
Mrs. Boutelle "kept a daily diary of a wagon trip made in 1902, and did important anthropological work without even knowing
it" (UCSD, 1990). Mrs. Boutelle died in Clinton, Iowa on January 4, 1928. Abbie Boutelle bequeathed her Basket collection
along with her notes and photo albums related to the basket collection to the San Diego Museum (now the San Diego Museum of
Man).